Elvis_Bogart:Frederick: My grandfather secretly took some pictures of Nagasaki two days after the bombing from a military surveillance plane. I have been trying to decide what to do with those pics.....

Would they be considered "classified" or still secret?

It was a secret to his superiors -not authorized. I kind of worry he could posthumously be disciplined for them. He was highly honored and I wouldnt want that jeopardized. But they are incredible pictures of the devastation.

Frederick:Elvis_Bogart: Frederick: My grandfather secretly took some pictures of Nagasaki two days after the bombing from a military surveillance plane. I have been trying to decide what to do with those pics.....

Would they be considered "classified" or still secret?

It was a secret to his superiors -not authorized. I kind of worry he could posthumously be disciplined for them. He was highly honored and I wouldnt want that jeopardized. But they are incredible pictures of the devastation.

Contact the PR office of the branch he served with and ask them. You could do it from an anonymous hotmail account if you are concerned about even asking the question. While I am sure he is safe, it never hurts to get permission in writing from an officer.

Frederick:Elvis_Bogart: Frederick: My grandfather secretly took some pictures of Nagasaki two days after the bombing from a military surveillance plane. I have been trying to decide what to do with those pics.....

Would they be considered "classified" or still secret?

It was a secret to his superiors -not authorized. I kind of worry he could posthumously be disciplined for them. He was highly honored and I wouldnt want that jeopardized. But they are incredible pictures of the devastation.

I'd contact the Library of Congress and/or the Smithsonian. The photos are an important historical record that should be preserved and made available.

Do you really think they'd posthumously discipline a vet? That would be a PR nightmare. It won't happen.

CSB: Some years back, I was doing document review in a state's archives. In one of the boxes, I turned up an original copy of the Thirteenth Amendment that had been sent to that state for ratification. Original signature from Seward, too.

Holy crap.

It got passed around my team for a few minutes so we could all say that we had held and read it.

Then I took it to the director of the archives and told him what it was. Eyes went wide. It ended up in their special collection with climate control and futzy treatment. Am still proud that it got the treatment it deserved while still in excellent condition.

L.D. Ablo:Frederick: Elvis_Bogart: Frederick: My grandfather secretly took some pictures of Nagasaki two days after the bombing from a military surveillance plane. I have been trying to decide what to do with those pics.....

Would they be considered "classified" or still secret?

It was a secret to his superiors -not authorized. I kind of worry he could posthumously be disciplined for them. He was highly honored and I wouldnt want that jeopardized. But they are incredible pictures of the devastation.

I'd contact the Library of Congress and/or the Smithsonian. The photos are an important historical record that should be preserved and made available.

Do you really think they'd posthumously discipline a vet? That would be a PR nightmare. It won't happen.

My father never made the pictures public because he suspects there may be something sensitive in the photos. There is a reason my grandfather took the pics, and it wasnt purely out of curiosity or novelty.

An anonymous donation to the Smithsonian is an option I hadnt considered -thanks.

One photograph from the immediate aftermath of WW2 I'll remember for a long time was of a young girl looking over what was left of the Warsaw Ghetto. I'd read stories about how the Germans had leveled it after the Warsaw Uprising but it was still a shock to see what they'd done. It was nothing but rubble. God only knows how many dead were lying underneath all that.

At least you can see Kim Il Sung is definitely Kim Jong Un's Grandpappy.

Whenever I see pictures of Nazis at the end of the war, especially concentration camps, it really fills me with anger at the things they did. Some you can see shame in their eyes, some a steely determination to never admit wrong. They know what they did.

Averageamericanguy....... Many Japanese withdrew deeper into islands in many south east asian countries. Be it in platoons or 4 or 5 guys. They managed to keep their weapons and took heaps of ammo. When one finally gave up in the 1970s he was the last of 5 or 6 guys. Found with his uniform in tatters but his rifle in perfect working order and crated of ammunition and grenades in working order. ( My phone sucks for farking, excuse the errors that grammar nazis eyegasm at.)

I don't think that most people (including myself and I'm 54) has any idea what that generation went through on both sides. This is one reason I do and will always respect old people. It wasn't just a military war like all of them have been since. It was one that everyone was involved in and did withiout.

The picture of the woman cleaning up rubble by the Kaiser Wilhelm Church made me go on google street view to look at Tauentzienstrasse today. What a difference.

I lived in a part of Germany that didn't get much damage during the war and in any case would have long since been cleaned up by the time I was there in the mid-sixties as a little child, but still it's amazing to me to see in these old pictures the kind of damage that was done to the country.

I'm always amazed, too, that such a beautiful, civilized country full of beautiful, civilized people could ever have been involved in something so horrible the entire world had to get together and stop it.

AverageAmericanGuy:So those guys holed up in the Philippines running guerrilla attacks against the Filipino citizenry, where did they get their ammunition and weapons from?

Do all guerrilla attacks require ammunition and weapons? And besides, the caption says he still had hand grenades with him. If he was initially dropped off with a few crates of them, well, that would be enough for one big show per six months.